Dvd to Avi

I was just wondering what is the best program to take a dvd and put the video and audio on my hard drive as avi. I am going over seas and I don't want to hall all my dvd's over there with me. So if there is a program that can do that please let me know. Thank you.

 

I think Quick Media Converter 3.6.0 will do it. It's worked on everything else I've tried on it.

 

If your movies were purchased from a retail store, you'll have to rip them to your hard drive first and remove the protection. To do this, use DVD43 (freeware; I haven't used it but it has a perfect rating of 5 stars) or DVDFab (was freeware, but I think the trial has full limited functionality) or DVD Decrypter (freeware; no longer supported, developed, or updated, but still works great). These programs will copy the DVD in it's entirety to your hard drive; DVDFab has an option to just rip the main movie. Once the ripping is done, you'll need to convert the main movie to a much more compressed format like an AVI using the DivX or XViD codec. You can do this using the app listed above, or use AutoGK to do the work. With AutoGK, you can set a custom file size, and put up to 7 AVI movies on one DVD to watch on your PC. Or you can simply store the AVI files on your hard drive (figure 700mb-1.4gb per movie).

Good luck! If you need more help, there's tons of help on-line (www.afterdawn.com and www.doom9.org are great sites), or post here!

 

This is a link to the free version that just rips the DVD to the hard drive
http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm

I prefer Handbrake for converting
http://majorgeeks.com/HandBrake_d5801.html